


Wings

by nice_girls_play



Category: The Young Ones (TV 1982)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Dubious Consent, Fingerfucking, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 04:34:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10869210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nice_girls_play/pseuds/nice_girls_play
Summary: Rick has a fever.





	Wings

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at FF.net and on the Young Ones Slash LiveJournal page in 2007.
> 
> For [Mercury Starlight (WoolandWater)](http://archiveofourown.org/users/WoolandWater/pseuds/Mercury%20Starlight).

_I know the way you feel I know it ain't too good_   
_I know it feels like there's detergent in your blood_   
_But don't you worry, gonna make you feel alright_   
_I'm gonna lift your black depression, help you through the night_

 

 

\--

Rick dreams in black and white when he's ill. 

The first night he dreams of Cliff in "Summer Holiday," with himself in place of Lauri Peters, the American girl dressed as an American boy. The minute he's awake, he knows he must be ill, because the film was in technicolor, while he and Cliff were snog-- dancing in grainy monochrome.

He also hums in his sleep when he's ill, drools in his sleep more so than usual, and gets the sweats and the shakes when he's awake. He's so cold, goose flesh rises at the smallest draft, but perspiration runs down from his brow and neck, sticking his pigtails to his collar. He can feel the heat in his face rising slowly over the course of the day, like the tempo of "Devil Woman."

He never understood the obviously flawed logical paradox of how he could be running such a high fever and be so cold at the same time. He asked Mummy about it once but can't remember what she said. And, of course, he can't ask her now, much as he would like to. He's more likely to get an answer from the insomniac rats that live in the walls surrounding his room.

Not that he knows this is a fever (though it's a pretty good guess) or even what his temperature is. That would mean getting the thermometer and that would mean asking Neil where he keeps the emergency first aid kit. Not a bloody chance. 

Anyway, he knows pretty much everything he needs to already.

It starts with a cough he'd been suppressing for a month. Afraid Vyvyan or Michael would notice and find some painful and humiliating way to exploit his illness, he'd kept it at bay with water, cough syrup and -- once or twice -- provoking Vyvyan into attacking him. He reasoned the fists and boots to his chest and stomach would be enough to somehow flog the nagging virus from his system. 

For a few weeks, it seems to genuinely work. Then the coughing fits returned with a fury and brutality that rivals any of Thatcher's toyboy Hitler youth; accompanied by a yellowish-green bile rising in his throat and a throbbing in his head that started between his eyes and went all the way down to the base of his spine. 

On this glorious, rare sunny morning in Britain, he wakes up from the dream and he can't lift his head without moaning, can't turn his head without coughing, can't unbutton his pajamas with his shaking fingers. He can hear Neil fighting a losing battle with the kettle downstairs. Across the hall, he can hear Vyvyan and Michael talking about the differences between copper poisoning and iron poisoning. Which can be caused by an overdose of B12 and which can be caused by a large fragment of early 20th-century kitchenware being accidentally lodged in your face?

 

_BOOM_

 

It sounds like Neil is well on his way to finding out.

No, the 21-year-old sociology student decides, he's better off just staying in his room today; out of the line of fire. And so what if they don't answer? At least the rats listen to him...

And surely, they've never tried to blow anyone up...

\--

The second night he dreams about the baker's truck that wrapped his daddy's Bentley around a light pole. 

Somewhere in his room is the letter or apology the driver sent him a year ago. No use trying to blame him though Rick most certainly does. It was Daddy who had missed the stop sign, after all. But it's hard to blame a man who lost his life because he was trying to light a cigar and steer a car with his elbows at the same time. Even if he was a huge Tory fascist who only occasionally listened. He had, at the very least, cared enough to complain endlessly.

Mummy, for some reason, had forgotten to wear her seat belt that morning. He dreams about her being thrown from the car: broken glass from the windshield, legs pulled at odd angles on the pavement, arm twisted and crushed beneath her, blue-green eyes -- now gray -- staring lifelessly up at the milky-white sky. A silver-gray butterfly flutters down to land in a sump of black blood on her forehead. Jacoba, his third nanny, had had a word for those. "Mariposas." 

Mariposa. She called him that as well, now that he thinks about it. At his parents' funeral, she had pressed his face to one bony, black lace shoulder and stroked his hair, roughly pulling the locks that got caught on her wedding rings. 

"Lo siento, Mariposa."

He wakes up drowning; sputtering, choking, gasping for air, coughing water up on his chest and bedclothes, the cold soaking through to his already clammy skin.

"You bloody moron!" Vyvyan is on the bed next to him, snatching up the two aspirin he'd spit out from his chest and popping them back into his mouth.

What the hell is Vyvyan doing in his room? How did he get past the three locks he fastened from the inside? What's he doing on his bed?! 

He gags on the tablets and garbles all three questions unintelligibly around his flatmate's dirty fingers. The punk seems to get it and offers this answer:

"Be sick on me, poof, and I'll throw you through the fucking window."

\--

 

_I know you're desperate, I really sympathise_  
 _I see the morbid horror flicker in your eyes_  
 _But rest assured I'm gonna help to ease your pain_  
 _I'm gonna put a thousand tiny implants in your brain_  
 

__

\--

Vyvyan is, by far, the most disturbing angel of mercy Rick has ever seen. 

When he says this aloud, in between fits of thick coughing and hacking into a yellowing-gray handkerchief, he uses the word "fascist." Dictatorial. Hermann Hess with a halo.

Not an angel of mercy so much as an angel of "stop your bloody whinging or I'll smash your teeth down your throat." "Stop fidgeting or I'll put it in your arse instead." "Drink this, you bloody girl, or I'll kill you." That's his flatmate as he pours another aspirin and a glass of watery honey and lemon drink down his throat, much of it ending up on his chin and up his nose, leaving him sputtering again, his chest and throat burning even worse than before.

Rick's mind can't formulate any sensible explanation for why he would be here. Other than that perhaps he came to gloat over his soon-to-be dead body and just arrived unfashionably early. His brain finally shuts down, still trying to reason it out, and his body busies itself with more simple, worthwhile pursuits -- such as purging itself of all excess fluids.

In his feverish delirium, it's amazingly easy to imagine Vyvyan with a pair of wings. Well, not wings as in soft and fluttering and gossamer white -- Lord knows Vyvyan would kill him if he knew that's what he was thinking. Maybe iron or stone, like those cemetery statues he'd seen once on a school trip to Winchester.

At least one part of the angelic cliche is accounted for: underneath all his chains and putrefied denim, Vyvyan's a blond. 

A very fair, very natural blond. 

Not even a streaky, orange-green 'oops sorry mum, I accidentally spilled bleach into my cream rinse... when I was doing the washing up... in the toilet" blond.  
Rick knows this because he accidentally saw him in the bath once. 

Not that he had wanted to. And it really wasn't his fault. More than an hour had passed since Mike's turn in the bath. Logically, the toilet should have been free by then. So, thinking it was empty, he barged in and started laying out his towel and bath kit. However, when he went to turn the taps on, he found that the tub was already filled almost to the top with thick orange-red water. The sharp, burnt odor of alcohol, iodine and filth rolled off the surface, curling under his nostrils and burning his nose-hair. 

A split-second later, Vyvyan's face -- free of piercings, eyes closed -- emerged from the water. His hands and arms followed, white fingers pushing long, swirling tendrils of submerged hair back from his face...

Blinking the water from his lashes, the medical student's eyes met his and he'd bolted up into a standing position in the bath, splashing water onto the walls and the floor. White-amber rivulets had streamed down his face, neck, chest, stomach, beading on the ring through his left nipple, pooling in his belly button and the patch of hair just above his thick, blunt coc--

Rick remembered standing there rooted to the spot, stunned and more than a little frightened as his eyes darted about, finally settling on the pale, wet gold hair slicked back from his face and pressed into flat waves against the back of his neck. He'd moved to cover his eyes, stumbling backward, tripping over himself as he made panicked, rambling apologies all while Vyvyan just stood there and smirked at him, one hand sliding down to cover his dangly bits like that curvy bird on the fucking clam shell...

He should have known, really. Under all that steel and homicidal bravado, Vyvyan was just a big girl like him. 

A few hours later, he thinks he gets a glimpse of his flatmate's wings -- jagged steel and exposed rebar shining under the hallway lights -- when Vyvyan carries him to the bath and drops him into the same tub -- into the same dark bathwater.. which seems to be letting off a rather toxic glow now. His stained, water-logged pajamas cling to his weedy frame as he sits up to glare at his "angel."

"Scrub up, poof," Vyvyan says. "You stink."

"Oh! So I stink, do I?! Well, let me tell you something Vyvyan. You--"

His indignation smothers in a stream of gurgling protests as the punk promptly reaches down and shoves his head under the water.

\--

"Why are you doing this?" he asks when the bath water's gone cold and he's down on all fours on the rug, struggling to get himself into the dry clothes the punk handed to him. Handed, of course, meaning tossed at him as he crawled out of the tub and onto the floor. "I mean, what could you possibly be getting out of all of this?"

Vyvyan leans against the sink, smoking a cigarette, soaked in filthy, glowing water up past his waist and elbows. The lilt in his voice doesn't quite match the odd look on his face.

"It's pretty simple, actually. You get well and I get to watch you falling about the place, at your most hideous, disgusting and utterly miserable."

"Oh. Just so long as I know why." The weak sarcastic edge in Rick's voice doesn't match what he's feeling either as he finally pushes his head through the neck hole of his buttoned pajama top and grabs for the punk's outstretched hand.

He wants to ask Vyvyan why it's so important for him to get better, when his hated flatmate could easily let his condition fester until he dies a horrible, repulsive death curled up in the corner of his bed.

But he doesn't want to give him any ideas.

\--

 

_Don't get too depressed, I've found a way to help your case_  
A little hypodermic sends you into outer space...

 

\--

The third night, Rick doesn't dream at all. Because he never gets to sleep. How can he possibly be expected to sleep with the three deep flock of silver and black butterflies that surround his bed? 

Two days on and the congestion in his chest and head have finally subsided. He can breathe again, but his mouth, throat and lungs have all but shriveled. And, to add insult to injury, nausea has set in with a vengeance. This morning, for seemingly no reason at all, his stomach contents flowed like a dam bursting in Beirut; ripping open his dry throat with the corrosive force of battery acid. 

By the late afternoon, muscles aching from being repeatedly twisted and throttled like a toothpaste tube, he'd collapsed on his stomach and just stayed down; his face turned toward the edge in case the saucepan Neil left by the side of his bed this morning wasn't quite *full* enough...

The butterflies showed up shortly afterwards. Hundreds of them, all sizes and shapes, fluttering just above the length of his bed. Every now and again, a few of them would swoop down close to his face or land on his shoulder, his arm, the back of his neck, soft wings and probing antennae tickling his hyper-sensitive skin. Their proboscis, when viewed up close, resembled small, outstretched needles and their tiny black eyes were in fact, a glittering red. But, in that fascinated moment, neither of those things really worried him...

Of course, the swarm disperses the second Vyvyan enters the room. They don't like his flatmate. He'll have to work that into one of their arguments later: even pure woodland creatures with a cartoonish affinity for absolutely everyone flee at the sight of Vyvyan Basterd. How pathetic! 

Then again, Vyvyan would probably like that so perhaps he won't.

Vyv enters quietly, as he has the past two nights. He's perfected this covert action over the years, Rick's noticed: slipping inside his flatmate's room sight unseen to saw his bed him half or set fire to his stack of essays. 

The odd look is back on his face. His features, usually tight and sneering, are smooth, almost calm.

He's got to be dreaming.

He's so tired, no longer sure what's a dream and what's real now. He stares at his arm dangling from the edge of the cot and sees that the flesh peeking out of his sleeve is more white than pink. Is he the dream? Vyvyan flickers between staticky silver-gray and sodium lamp yellows and reds, the warm, rough blue of shredded denim, like a broken television set. The jar in his hand flashes black and gray, then a more familiar custardy-yellow with a blue label.

"What've you got that for jelly for, Vyvyan?"

"'Cuz if I stuck the Vicks back there, it'd burn like hell."

The joke isn't completely lost on him, but the part of his brain that would have seized up in horror has already checked out for the day. He registers Vyvyan's hand sliding across his forehead, a thumb and forefinger digging in painfully to pry one of his eyes open. 

"Won't be much longer now."

"What won't?"

"Nothing. Budge up a bit."

There's not a lot of room to budge on his mattress and he's really too physically exhausted to move, but neither point seems to matter. Vyvyan solves both problems by slinging one leg over on either side of his legs and climbing on top of him, sitting back heavily on his knees (and, rather painfully, his flatmate's). Rick murmurs a slight protest when the medical student slices his pajama top up the back with his knife. Still, he tries to help by lifting his shoulders when Vyvyan pushes the sleeves down his arms and onto the floor.

He's no longer shaking from the cold, but a shiver runs through him when Vyv's hands reach down and cradle either side of his face. He winces as the medical student roughly turns his head to one side, then the other, moaning aloud at the sound of the bones in his neck clicking together like a shotgun blast in his ear.

"Oh! You bastard.."

Vyvyan responds by cuffing him on the back of his head.

"Lie still."

Rick's exhausted mind wonders why Vyvyan seems to have dropped all terms of endearment from his lexicon. That should have been followed with a "you poof" or a "you girl," shouldn't it?

The stuff in the jar is more like oil than jelly as Vyv pours it down and across his back in a cross-shape. It smells vaguely lemony, like the eucalyptus bath salts Mummy used to keep on the sink at home. There's also whiffs of antiseptic soap, jewelry cleaner, the pungent whiff of stale lager. Apparently, Vyvyan mixed it himself. Rick crosses his fingers that the stuff isn't combustible and explodes the second his flatmate's skin touches his.

It doesn't. But Vyvyan's fingers on his shoulders, back and neck isn't any more pleasant. He wants to yell at him that he's tying knots in muscles that were already sore to start with. But for all he knows, the medical student could know some odd trick of how to remove his spleen without any surgical implements. He's really too exhausted to talk anyway.

His flatmate's fingers dig deep strokes into his aching muscles, pressing all of his weight into his hands and pushing forward, popping each vertebrae like glass. The flesh of his back is cold where Vyv's fingers are putting intense, painful pressure on his muscles, then subsequently floods with warmth the second they move on to another set of problem areas, stimulating circulation. Forget the blankets, the sort-of-hot bath, the threadbare pajamas. This is the warmest he's been in days and his body hums with approval. 

His body's not the only thing that's humming and Rick turns his face into his pillow to muffle the sound. He thinks fleetingly that Vyvyan's going to make a great doctor someday and that unsettles him. He's further disturbed by the realization that he sincerely means it and wants to say it out loud, even if it's just this once.  
Vyvyan relieves him of the decision a second later when he hooks warm, slick fingers into the bedclothes rucked up around his waist. He feels cool air rush in as the blankets are pulled down from around his legs. His trousers and pants follow a second later.

"Vyvyan..?" His voice breaks on a sigh as his flatmate's frenetic hands move down his spine to his arse, up towards his shoulder blades in smooth, gliding strokes and back down again. 

He's got goosebumps everywhere his fingers trail over him. The sudden touch on him down there alerts him to the fact that he's got the beginnings of an erection. More embarrassing, he realizes he's, in fact, had one for the past twenty minutes or so, roughly since Vyvyan climbed on top to straddle him. He tenses up, trying to withdraw the slightest bit from his flatmate's probing fingers, wanting to hide, to melt into the stained mattress, to dissolve inside his own diseased body. 

There's no hiding, however, when one of Vyv's fingers slides between the cleft of his buttocks and presses against his entrance. 

"Oh... Vyvyan..." The touch sends his body into full spasm. His hands fumble on the floor and on the mattress, bracing for any support. The pillow gets smashed between the bed and the wall, the saucepan next to the bed flies toward the opposite wall with a dull clang.

"Vy--Vyv? _Vyv!_ "

"Push, Rick," he's pushing his finger firmly against his entrance, breaching it with the tip.

"What..?" he cranes his neck to look back at his flatmate.

"Push."

Rick can't believe his ears. It's beyond disgusting. Never mind that, he's vomited up everything he's eaten in the past few days. For once, there's nothing in his system to push.

"But.. I don't--"

"Rick, bloody _push_..." 

His voice is unusually quiet, raw with something Rick can't quite identify. But it sends a violent shiver through his whole body.

Breathing shakily, he concentrates on prying his muscles open and Vyvyan's finger slides inside easily, stroking and probing. He pushes a second one in a moment later, curling them and pressing against some spot deep inside that makes Rick's thighs shake. The springs below them are starting to creak erratically along with them as Vyvyan leans in to push against him.

His prick is hard and pressing painfully into the mattress, hips rubbing into the scratchy bedclothes almost of their own accord. Vyvyan slides his free arm underneath his hips and helps pull him up onto his hands and knees. Face bowed into his arm, he shudders when he's finally able to slide his hand between his legs. The touch of his hand on his cock is bliss, freedom, a circuit closing. There's electricity in his blood and nerve endings as he squeezes hard and pushes back against his flatmate's fingers. Almost... wantonly.

He wants this. 

"This." 

What the bloody hell is "this?"

He feels Vyvyan's other hand slide up his shoulder and into his hair, the scratch of the punk's stars as he rests his forehead against his back, the hot pulse of his breath on his spine.

Rick pushes back frantically, not even trying to conceal his moans anymore as Vyvyan pushes a third finger inside him, spreading them, twisting them and rubbing frantically against that mystic spot. The bed frame is banging against the wall, leaving dents in the already scarred woodwork. They're flying, lifting the frame off the ground and slamming back down into the floor with the force of their rocking.

Vyvyan bares his teeth against his back at the same time his thumb brushes against the head of his cock and suddenly, he's lost it, thrusting madly into his awkward fist. The world explodes behind his eyes and semen shoots between his fingers onto the sheets below him. His knees give out and he crashes down against the bed, Vyvyan's warm weight against his back.

The girlie romance novels he pretends aren't under the floorboard lied. All that stuff about spent lovers breathing in tandem is bollocks. He breathes in, Vyvyan breathes out. He lets out a ragged sigh, Vyvyan sucks in a breath and some of his flesh still under his mouth with it... And so it goes... in a slow asthmatic cacophony, out of sync.

Until Vyvyan braces a hand -- the hand that was inside him, Rick registers -- against his leg and pushes himself up. The cold air rushes in where Vyv's body had been lying on him. 

"Turn over," he murmurs.

Again, there's not a lot of room for Rick to turn but he manages to anyway. His muscles manage to feel both light and heavy as he turns to stare up at his flatmate. All business it seems, in spite of the dark spot on the front of his denim trousers slowly spreading from the crotch seam to the top of his thigh, Vyvyan pushes a glass thermometer between his lips and maneuvers it under his tongue.

Where Vyv managed to retrieve the thermometer, he has no idea. His eyes are fixed on his flatmate's face: brow creased thoughtfully, eyes dark and murky, squinting to read the red line.

"37 degrees. Fever's broken," Vyvyan's eyes are shining when he finally gazes down at his 'patient.'

Rick continues to stare up at him, unblinking, just barely hearing him over the blood rushing in his ears. His chest is still heaving, slowly, quietly. He trembles when Vyvyan's hand moves to cover his eyes, pushing damp hair off his forehead.

"Try to get some sleep, all right?" 

His voice is thick, ragged, soothing in that moment and Rick's eyes slip closed, a million questions fading into the abyss of unconsciousness.

Rick sleeps for 13 hours straight the following day; through two lectures, an AS meeting, and Neil's semi-urgent calls for breakfast, then tea. He dreams of filthy bathtubs full of diseased butterflies and angels with crumbling wings crashing into walls. But mostly, he dreams of Vyvyan...

In broad, gorgeous technicolor.

\--  
 _Heart attack, you know you're never coming back.._  
Cos I'm the Doctor

**Author's Note:**

> The lyrics are from Motorhead's "I'm the Doctor." "Mariposa" is Spanish for "butterfly" and it's also a (rather rude) slang term for gay men. "Hermann Hess" alludes to the author of _Steppenwolf_ and _Siddhartha_ (two books Neil would probably read and love) but is actually a misnomer: Rick mistakenly combined the names of two high profile Nazi officers -- Rudolf Hess and Hermann Göring.
> 
> The level of consent here is sketchy at best -- regardless of whether Vyvyan realizes that Rick's delirium has ended, he never asks and Rick never says yes or no. Not a decision I would make today as a writer, but I was reluctant to change it for re-posting.


End file.
